Until Rae had the notion to speak again. “I haven’t said anything, but I’ve got to tell you my curiosity is killing me.” She dropped her fork and leaned across her plate, her eyes trapping mine. “Why the fuck are you and Cole acting like shitheads to each other? It’s like working with psychos. You’re all nicey-nicey to everyone else and then your attitude turns to ice the second he walks in the room and vice versa. Split personalities much?”

Honestly I was impressed that she’d managed to restrain herself for this long. I blew out air between my lips before answering her. “He kept coming on to me, so I put him in his place.”

Rae laughed. “Why would you do a silly thing like that? It’s Cole.”

“It’s Cole—so what? Just because he’s hot and talented and confident I should fall at his feet? I know his type, believe me. I don’t do bad-boy players anymore. They chew you up and spit you back out. As for Cole, he’s like the Thor of the bad-boy world and . . .” I trailed off as Rae started laughing hysterically.

Glowering at her, I waited for her to stop.

My annoyance only made her laugh harder, so it took her a while to finally calm down. I’d finished my dinner, in fact.

“Oh.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “Forget the hilariously random analogy that didn’t even make a lot of sense but totally did anyway. What the hell are you talking about?”

I stared at her blankly. “Cole. Bad boy.”

“Right.” Rae snorted and started chuckling again.

“What?” I said, more than annoyed now.

“Nothing.” She stood up and took our plates over to the sink. “I’ll let you figure this one out on your own, you bloody numb nut.”

Bewildered, I stared at her as she cleaned the plates. Finally I got up and left the kitchen but not before murmuring somewhat huffily, “You’re the numb nut.”

Her only response was to keep laughing, which she knew would bug the crap out of me.

*   *   *

The next day something different happened. Something unusual.

Like every day I let myself into the studio just before nine o’clock knowing that Cole and either Rae or Simon were already there setting up for the day. Sometimes, nearly almost always, if it was Simon’s day to work he came out to greet me and retrieve the cappuccino I brought him. If it was Rae’s day she came out to tease me about something and retrieve the black coffee I’d brought her.

Cole never came out to greet me in the morning. Not since we’d declared war.

So I was more than a little taken aback to see him striding toward me as I shrugged out of my jacket.

“Today we call a truce,” his deep voice boomed into the room.

Ignoring the familiar butterflies that took up residence in my belly whenever Cole entered the room, I crossed my arms over my chest in defiance. I might have looked intimidating and impressive if it wasn’t for the fact that I had to tilt my head back so much to look up at him. “I don’t see the point.”

The muscle in Cole’s jaw flexed. I ignored the warning sign that I was pissing him off.

“Well?” I shrugged, flicking my hair over my shoulder.

His eyes followed the movement before he could stop it.

“Cole?”

Transferring his focus from my hair to my face, Cole sighed. “Can you just pretend to be a grown-up for two seconds? One: I don’t like acting like this. I rarely acted like a teenage brat when I was a teenager, and it bloody galls me that a two-foot-nothing Glaswegian has reduced me to one.”

Irritated at the suggestion I was the reason he couldn’t maintain a level of professionalism (he was the one who started snapping at me when I shot him down), I opened my mouth to argue only for Cole to silence me by cutting the air in front of me with his hand.

“Don’t.” His tone and body language suggested it might be safer for me to listen. Cole waited a beat to see if I was going to obey his command. It hurt to do it, but I couldn’t help remembering the way he lifted me out of my chair as if I were inconsequential. “Two,” he continued once he realized I wasn’t going to back talk him. “Stu is popping in today with an old friend who wants a new tattoo from him. If Stu senses even the tiniest bit of the bad atmosphere you and I have created this past month, he’ll fire your arse so fast your knickers will turn to ash.”

Oh, crap.

That never even occurred to me.

I was immediately consumed by anxiety.

What I was feeling must have shown on my face, because Cole’s expression actually softened. “I can pretend to get on with you if you can.”

The thought of losing my job caused me to nod quickly in agreement. As we stared at each other I wanted to ask why Cole would think to protect me, to protect my position here. I would have thought he’d be glad to see me fired.

Too scared to ask him in case it made him change his mind, I kept my lips sealed and Cole gave me a determined nod before heading into the back.

I stared after him for a while, beyond puzzled that he’d been considerate enough to do this for me. For some reason a surge of uneasiness began to slosh around in my tummy for a while.

*   *   *

No more than forty minutes later the front door of the studio opened and the mammoth that was Stu Motherwell strode inside. Although I was anxious I was also pleased to see him. He had a natural merriment about him that really did remind me of a biker version of Santa Claus.

As he walked in he was talking to the man behind him. The man was almost the same height, same build, same hair, with the same beard.

“There she is!” Stu bellowed cheerily. “Steely, meet Shannon. Shannon, Steely.”

Steely and I exchanged hellos as Cole strolled into the main studio. He reached Stu and it was hard not to miss the affection in the older man’s eyes. I’d known Cole meant something to Stu during our interview. He spoke about Cole with such respect. But now I could see it was more than that. As he clamped a hand on Cole’s shoulder, giving him a manly shake and asking him how he was, it was in the gesture of a father asking a son.

He said something, but I wasn’t quite paying attention to what; I was so focused on witnessing the dynamic between them. But then Cole laughed at whatever Stu had said and it was a deep, rumbling, full-on laugh that lit up his eyes and completely mesmerized me. I’d never seen Cole laugh like that before.

It occurred to me then that I didn’t really know Cole Walker at all.

I’d made assumptions (which I still believed were true), but I didn’t know a thing about Cole’s past, his present, or what made him tick.

“Shannon?”

I blinked out of my musings. Stu grinned back and forth between Cole and me in a way I found disturbing. “How you getting on?” He looked at Cole. “How’s wee fairy getting on?”

Cole immediately threw me a kind smile that caused this weird flippy feeling in my chest. “She’s doing great. She’s revolutionizing your filing, Stu.”

Doing my very best to hide my shock, I grinned gratefully back at Cole.

He appeared almost dazzled by the smile, blinking rapidly at me.

“Good stuff,” Stu said, apparently not noticing the strange interplay between his two employees. “Which room am I in today, then?”

“Mine,” Cole said. “It’s Rae’s day off, so I’ll take her room.” He nodded past Stu to Steely. “How’s things?”

“Aye, no bad.” He frowned, though. “After fifteen years together, the wife finally noticed I’ve got a woman’s name scribed on my shoulder.” He looked at me in disbelief. “Fifteen years. Talk about a lack of interest, eh?”

“To be fair, it is a tiny script and the name is ‘Cherry,’” Stu said.

“Aye, that was her argument. I asked her what the hell she thought ‘Cherry’ meant if it wasn’t a woman. She said she thought it was a fucking song title.” Steely sighed. “Anyway, she’s annoyed about it, so I promised I’d get one done for her to prove some such nonsense or whatever. I don’t know. So let’s get it done.” Cole chuckled and Steely pinned him to the wall with a serious glower. “Never get a woman’s name inked on your skin. Never.”